The news seems grim, that the Bush Administration and the DOJ purged 8 US Attorney’s including the one from Seattle.

The foes, including Hillary, charge the firings are political.

Of course they are, the position is a political appointee, like the president’s Cabinet.

And Hillary should know that intimately:  Her husband and his AG Janet Reno fired 93 in one swoop.  But apparently that is vastly different.   Once again the Democrats leap on a non issue for partisan gain.

Hillary Clinton Calls for Gonzales’ Resignation

In an exclusive interview to air Wednesday morning, March 14, on “Good Morning America,” Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, for the first time called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“The buck should stop somewhere,” Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, “and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president’s personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign.

“I’m deeply disturbed by what we have learned thus far,” Clinton said, “and I join those who are calling for a full and thorough investigation to try to get to the bottom of these very political decisions that interfere with prosecutorial responsibility by U.S. attorneys, and I think that the attorney general should resign.”

I checked and could not find any evidence of her asking for Janet Reno’s head on a platter.  She answered that criticism thus:

When Clinton’s husband took office in 1993, one of the first actions his attorney general took was to remove every U.S. attorney. Clinton was asked how this was different from the termination of eight U.S. attorneys last December.

“There is a great difference,” Clinton said. “When a new president comes in, a new president gets to clean house. It’s not done on a case-by-case basis where you didn’t do what some senator or member of Congress told you to do in terms of investigations into your opponents. It is ‘Let’s start afresh’ and every president has done that.”

Can you see the reverse logic at play?  It was OK for Clinton to fire all of them, not based on their merits or their performance. but simply based on partisan desire and politics.

But if Bush evaluates them based on complaints and performance, and selectively removes the ones not doing their jobs, he is being partisan and political.

If Hillary wins will she fire all of them?  I expect so.

Nwesbusters notes:

The Washington Post demonstrated a much richer double standard. While the Post has filed six heavy-breathing front-page stories on their newest Bush scandal, back in 1993, the story was over within a day or two. They reported Janet Reno’s purge on the front page, utterly without suspicion: “The Clinton administration yesterday requested that the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys submit their resignations, a move that likely will mean the quick departure of two figures who have played prominent roles in the politics of the District and Virginia.”

And it gets even more grim.  Over at Texas Rainmaker a more personal reason for the firings is shown”

Isn’t it ironic that Democrats are calling for resignations and heads to roll because 8 federal prosecutors were fired…

…yet they never uttered a peep about “political motivations” or White House conspiracies when one of their own, then-Attorney General Janet Reno, fired all 93 federal prosecutors, some of whom were actively involved in investigations that would later lead to convictions of several Clinton close friends and business partners.

On Aug. 16, 1993, Paula Casey, an active Democrat and a law student of Bill Clinton’s, took over from her Republican predecessor. Her job was to run interference and thwart any criminal referrals related to Whitewater and the Rose Law Firm.

In addition to quashing a criminal referral of Madison from the Resolution Trust Corp., she also was tasked to prevent Judge David Hale, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud, from testifying against the Clintons. She rejected Hale’s effort at a plea bargain. He had offered to share information on the “banking and borrowing practices of some individuals in the elite political circles of the state of Arkansas.” Guess who?

So Clinton fired prosecuters who were investigating him and Hillary, and there was no outcry.

Texas Rain Maker also noted:

Here’s what Democrat Chuck Schumer had to say when calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

The Senate’s No. 3 Democrat said Sunday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign because he is putting politics above the law. Sen. Charles Schumer cited the FBI’s illegal snooping into people’s private lives and the Justice Department’s firing of federal prosecutors.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said Gonzales repeatedly has shown more allegiance to President Bush than to citizens’ legal rights since taking his job in early 2005.

But here’s a little twist sure to make Chuck Schumer wince.

The White House suggested to the Justice Department two years ago that all 93 U.S. attorneys be fired, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

Eventually, eight U.S. attorneys were dismissed by last December.

The firings took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. One of the U.S. attorneys dismissed was John McKay of Seattle.

Documents and interviews indicate that Harriet Miers, who was then the White House counsel, suggested in February 2005 that all the prosecutors be dismissed and replaced with new Republican appointees for Bush’s second term.

That proposal was rejected by Gonzales as impractical and disruptive, Justice officials said.

Now who’s playing politics, Chucky?

And I have a personal reason to be glad of the latest purge.  The Seattle District US Attorney has been totally ignore rampant voter fraud in King County since the debacle in 2004 that left us with the stain of having the worst run elections in the country.

John McKay has expressed dismay there were any complaints about his prosecution, or lack of, but he is lying.  I heard him on the radio repeatedly deny he had any ability to investigate anything, and deny there were any complaints despite hearing those complaints on the air.

Sound Politics summarizes:

Today’s Seattle Times reports that John McKay insists that there was no evidence of election crimes in Washington’s November 2004 election. Granted, he appears to have relied solely on what the Republican legal team presented in the contest trial. And we now know that King County sandbagged discovery requests and stonewalled public records requests, and the schedule simply didn’t permit the litigants to force King County to produce all of the evidence in time for the trial. Here is a summary of what I’ve found in the 21 months after the trial ended:

Category of suspected illegal vote	Expected	Documented	More Info	Sample
Provisional ballots counted from unregistered “fatal pend” voter	170	170	here	photo
Provisional ballots counted from other unregistered voters	60	32	here	photo
Federal write-in ballot counted from unregistered voter who had not requested a ballot by the deadline	113	113	here	PDF
Two absentee ballots counted from the same voter	80	30	here	photo
Absentee ballot and provisional ballot counted from the same voter	50	11	here	photo
In-state absentee ballots postmarked after election day (Nov. 2)	>5	5		photo
Total suspected illegal votes	478	361

Notes: These are all cases of ballots that were unlawfully accepted for tabulation by elections officials. Therefore it’s only a partial list of what could reasonably be considered fraud. (I’ve excluded other varieties of illegal votes that could not have been prevented as easily by the elections staff during the canvassing period, e.g. felons, deceased, the provisional ballots that were shoved into polling place Accuvotes, people who voted both at the polls and by mail and votes cast by voters who were registered more than once. And I’m not even exploring whether all of the ballots were lawfully handled and counted after they were separated from their envelopes). The “expected” column indicates the number of such ballots that data records and other documents indicate one should expect to find if one were to perform an exhaustive search of the ballot envelopes and other physical records. The “documented” column indicates the number that have been corroborated by other King County records and/or by physical records that have been found and photographed after a partial search of the physical evidence.

Again, none of this specific evidence was presented or even known during the trial. But we were all tipped off that something wasn’t right when King County counted more votes than voters and admittedly fabricated the reconciliation reports. I would like to ask McKay the following: has he looked for and/or seen any of the funny votes listed above? Does he consider them to be sufficient evidence of unlawful vote counting to at least prompt a more comprehensive investigation? Has he conducted an investigation and concluded that all of these unlawful votes were caused solely by innocent human error? On what basis? If the answers to the first 3 questions are NO, YES and NO, would he be willing to assist in drafting a formal complaint that could lead to an investigation?

Not to mention:

http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/005257.html

http://soundpolitics.com/archives/006170.html

http://soundpolitics.com/archives/006187.html

http://soundpolitics.com/archives/004559.html

http://soundpolitics.com/archives/004543.html

While I know nothing about the other 7, except that failure to investigated voter fraud was mentioned, I can speak with confident authority that at least one of the 8 Bush and Gonzales fired, McKay, was clearly not doing his job, and fraud has gone unpunished and uninvestigated.

Bush and Gonzales did the right thing to ensure justice and the democrats who claim to advocate voters rights are once again playing the royal hypocrites.

More at Sister Toldjah, Rhymes With Right and Captain Ed

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